On the Immorality of Plagiarism

First of all, there is a simple point to be cleared up before any reasonable discussion on the topic can take place. The culprit, when he/she is not citing ‘precedents’ for their crime, try to exonerate themselves by pleading that they didn’t steal, merely ‘borrowed’. “I didn’t steal m’lud, I only borrowed,” is the sort of statement that gets you laughed out of court and into jail which is why no thief with an IQ of more than three would offer it in his defence. Incredibly though, you will find respected journalists offering it up in defence of the plagiarist. The more highly regarded the thief the more they rally to their defence, pleading that ‘borrowing’ is not theft.

In literature people do borrow, often unconsciously, and cannot help themselves. But if the writer catches himself on in time he is usually quite happy to acknowledge his source or he will surrender his project instantly if the borrowing has any significance and he has enough integrity not to want to put his name to something that wasn’t his in the first place . In any case, he is likely to be honest with himself, and with you.

The plagiarist however is a different animal. He steals consciously. And because he steals consciously he will never acknowledge his source. That is the difference and it is an important one.

The plagiarist will do anything rather than acknowledge his source because he knows, once he does so, he is instantly unmasked as a thief, a liar and a fraud. He spends his days therefore ducking and diving, hiding away, in order to avoid scrutiny. When he speaks in public he recites from pre-prepared answers. If he must be asked questions he demands to know what they are beforehand and the same applies to any footage shot of him for general distribution. He never confesses his crime either. He has ALWAYS to be found out and the more people he has to help him remain under cover the more difficult that is.

In days of yore many English dungeons could boast what they proudly called an “oubliette”. It comes from the French word “oublier” meaning “to forget”. Robin Hood was supposedly held in one before he was freed by his comrades. This contraption - sprung fully formed no doubt from the inventor’s brain – was basically a hole in the ground. The pit was shaped like a bottle with just room enough for the wretched victim to stand up in. You were lowered into the hole via the neck and the lid fixed on. Your captors then pissed off and forgot that you ever existed. There you remained, in cold endless night, until you went mad with grief and terror and eventually died of starvation. People who didn’t like you would say you “deserved” it.

A ‘successful’ plagiarist does something like this to his fellow man. The differences are that the victim gets to eat and walk around, and to lead what passes for a normal life; indeed you cannot ever tell he is in a pit at all,  if you do not hear his moans, because the oubliette he has been flung into and in which he dwells is his own soul, the soul that he once believed was his and now belongs to his tormentors. Now you know. And when next you hear the word ‘plagiarism’ you may move away fromt the conception of it as a game on a par with scrabble and think of it as it really is – a crime against all of us, because it is essentially a very serious crime against human rights and human freedom.

“To have been… or not to have been. That is the query.” ( Prince Mc Hamish of Scotland.)

       Plagiarism – The Ransacking of Another’s Soul.

         How to Tweak your Way to Ignominious Glory.

There are many types of plagiarism. It goes on in many disciplines from music to painting, from mathematics to medicine. It goes on from the simple story called “Finding Nemo” to the high-flying speeches of presidents. From lazy little Johnny sneaking a peek at his fellow student’s answers during exams to shysters avid for letters after their names offering theses by forgotten graduates, signatures substituted, in their demand for a doctorate they could never possibly win on their own merits. Proving it is difficult; and if the plagiarism is eminently successful you will need people of the same misfit sociopathy as yourself to fight in your corner.  Of course, the crime is indefensible no matter who is fighting your corner.

                        “Competitive Plagiarism”  is the most obnoxious form of the disease. This is where the malfeasant is motivated by the conviction based on self-inflated notions of his ‘abilities’; “anything you can do I can do better.” Providing of course you show me what and how. Just give me the text and explain to me how you created it bit by bit and ….I will take it from there. Ciao!

                        Salieri who is alleged to have pilfered the work of Amadeus Mozart falls into this category. The predator, in other words, takes the work of the other as  THE GIVEN  on which to stamp their own name and creates nothing by way of novel invention worth a damn. The goal is not in the service of art, not to improve on something pre-existing for the sake of art, assuming one’s talent is commensurate with one’s arrogance,….but to steal. Else one would acknowledge one’s source. In their defense, self-righteous plagiarists (as they all must be) will cite precedents, genres etc, whatever indeed will make the original creator look like a plagiarist himself. The plagiarist’s philosophy if thieves can be said to have one is that “all creators pilfer the ideas of others. I am no different but I can prove I am better at it.” Salieri might well refer to Mozart’s teacher Haydn or Bach to justify his theft. Fact is, Salieri is incapable of writing anything comparable on his own which is why he is driven to plagiarism in the first place, irrespective of whose shoulders Mozart may have stood on to create his own divine music. Apologists for Salieri and his ilk are all over the net. By the same token you will find people in your junk mail telling you you have won a million bucks if you just contact them to pick it up. Salieri is said to have been Mozart’s ‘friend’. Greed hath no friends.

                        Any schoolboy of twelve or over indeed can tell you how to go about your “borrowing” of ideas. For example, there is nothing new in the story of Hamlet. There are precedents in literature that go all the way back to Oedipus about the prince bent out of shape over his mother and her new lover who has usurped his father’s status and kingship. Freud wrote about its prevalence in myth and named the complex after Oedipus. Unaware that there are only 36 plots possible in the whole of literature according to recent findings Shakespeare would derive his plots from history books and other works by Boccaccio, Brooke, Holinshead etc. Ergo, I can pillage the plot of Hamlet with impunity just as Salieri might have pillaged the work of Mozart. There is nothing new in it after all. All I need is the essential tried-and-tested idea. THE MAIN IDEA. I can do with the rest as I will. Once I have that I can pillage the mighty scenes of  the ghost of  Hamlet’s father appearing to him on the battlements, the Mousetrap Play to unmask Claudius, the death and madness of Ophelia, the final showdown and death of the hero in a sword fight etc, etc.

                        Hamlet indeed is a good example because the plot is complex. The cake is rich and from it you can extract all sorts of ingredients if you are that desperate and barren. You keep the style of writing of course and the world of the play, tweaking this and tweaking that, tweaking here and tweaking there, until your little heart is content. “To be or not to be” becomes, under the laser of your ‘genius’ (After all you are now greater than your impudent rival Mr. Shakespeare) …. “To have been or not to have been.”  You blush at your own powers of creativity, at how you have moved the ghost from the battlements to the dungeons; the Mousetrap is renamed the Flytrap; and you positively weep when you fling Ophelia into a lake instead of a brook as the author had intended. It is all soooo you! You see your own reflection in every tweak. Tired of tweaking you may even get ‘professional tweakers’ marshalled  by your so-called ‘literary’ agent to take over for you while you dream of riches and fame and meeting the queen and learn how to pass yourself off as a saint from your PR people. Won’t daddy be proud?

                         Finally, you give your Hamlet black hair instead of blond, make him good with pistols instead of sword, remove him from stupid old Denmark, install him in a castle in Edinburgh and call your concoction “McHamish Prince of Scotland”.  A masterpiece is born! All kneel. You have won at last. People will call you a ‘great’ writer. But people are gullible as your agent, who is firmly on your side (at least until the shit hits the fan) has no doubt counseled you. As for the author you pillaged, in the words of Ophelia – “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown”. You know what you have done of course. And you cannot Un-Know it try as you might.

                        Et Caïn dit « Cet oeil me regarde toujours!  (Victor Hugo “La Conscience”.)

                         Next, in the illustrious company of whoever else has helped you commit your crime you have your story peddled to the publishing houses. Of course that is all just for the gullible. The pre-selected grabs his long-awaited product with both hands and sets about interesting the rest. They smell money in it which is all that concerns them. Their market researchers tell them it is time for just such a story. The world is hungry for your inconsolable hero. Mc Hamish has winner written all over him  and they buy up the copyrights. Trees are felled by the myriad and books shipped everywhere by night and day and, of course, film producers fall over themselves for their take of the ‘universal’ cake. The thing is a smash hit and Disney includes Mc Hamish’s castle in its theme park complete with ghost in the dungeons and the thrilling pistol-duel at the end. By then ,of  course, you have rehearsed your lines for the press; about how ‘inspired’ you were by a great idea that just fell into your lap out of the heavens where you now dwell, how you slaved and toiled into the wee hours giving shape to your masterpiece, how you sacrificed health and well-being in the style of the great Romantics (whose shoes you are not worthy to unlace), to bring forth your masterpiece…. and all the rest of it. Pabulum for the paying public for whom you have as much contempt as for the man you ripped off. Your agent protects you from very dangerous things like questions,unsolicited interviews and unexpected visitors.

                         And if your new-found wealth does not succeed in preventing you from being dragged into court by Shakespeare’s protectors, those messengers of Hugo’s eternal Eye devoted to the integrity of the creative soul of Mankind, your legal hounds can argue that your play is “similar to”  but not really the same. After all, Shakespeare’s ghost was younger, had a beard, didn’t speak in Glaswegian slang, appeared on the battlements for crying out loud not in the dungeons, was a swordsman not a gun-toter, his girl was called Ophelia and there is no connection at all betwen “Ophelia” and Agnes Ofeelme, etc, etc, etc, etc. Your fans have been educated into being appalled at the very notion that your genius that they crave in their sleep to emulate is being called into question. They sing hymns with anxious teachers for your vindication. Middle-class newspapers that serve the interests of those who have been creaming off from your theft rally with all the ruthlessness you deployed to commit it gather in their clubs to defend your innocence. Your agent and political gurus rejoice that they had the foresight to cast you as a saint in the way Maggie Thatcher was cast as a firm but sensitive Head Mistress. Everything is panning out perfectly. You are inviolable…… or so you think, now managing director of the magic theatre whose floors you used to scrub. Who can get at you? But, a large eye follows you to bed at night and in the morning as you draw your curtains it is staring at you from the horizon.

                        Of course, most of us know Hamlet - one of the greatest plays ever written. But we are not really talking about Hamlet per se. Nor Shakespeare for that matter. They are just similes for the sake of argument. It would be damn difficult to rip off Shakespeare without acknowledging him even though most lawyers can easily prove he is dead and a fair few that is is still alive and dines regularly with Elvis in Clapham. The Bard for all that is established forever.

                        But, what if your source is another book by an author that only a few people know about, an obscure writer whose story never quite got the fanfare treatment yours was guaranteed to get even before you began to paste it together?  What if it was a story ahead of its time that was allowed to sink into obscurity like the paintings of El Creco that were only rediscovered centuries after his death? For example, what if the story and the world within it was created by a doting father for his son. What then?

      Et, comme il s’asseyait, il vit dans les cieux mornes
L’oeil à la même place au fond de l’horizon.
Alors il tressaillit en proie au noir frisson.
        Cachez-moi !  cria-t-il; et, le doigt sur la bouche,…..

                        What I have explained by analogy is, as far as I am concerned, how it is done by plagiarists everywhere who are driven by greed and ambition. You need neither flair, nor imagination. You need to know only how to read, photocopy and to write. And, we can all write. Can’t we?